Close Your Eyes and It's Gone
by GLuisa88
Summary: "Dean was furious with Sam. What the hell was he thinking? One minute Dean was talking to him and then Dean blinks, he freakin' blinks, and Sam's gone. Dean knows he's  not crazy and he wonders where Sam picked up this fancy new trick."


**Title:** Close Your Eyes and It's Gone

**Prompt:** Disappearing

**Rating:** T for language

**Warnings:** None

**Summary:** "Dean was furious with Sam. What the hell was he thinking? One minute Dean was talking to him and then Dean blinks, he freakin' _blinks_, and Sam's gone. Dean knows _he's_ not crazy and he wonders where Sam picked up this fancy new trick."

**A/N: **This was written for my hurt/comfort bingo prompt over at LJ :) I hope you like!

I don't know why, but this is what popped into my head when I read the prompt. I realize that it's probably outside the realm of possibility for trauma to cause something like this but this is Supernatural so just go with it! lol!

* * *

><p><em>"Bobby? Yeah, this is Sam... It's Dean... I don't know what's wrong with him... I really need your help..."<em>

**/ / /  
><strong>

Dean wondered why everyone always said the sky was blue. It really wasn't. It was kind of colorless actually. Sometimes if he looked at it at the right angle, if he tilted his head just right he was able to see just a hint of yellow... but just a hint. Like hellfire peaking out from behind the veil.

Maybe it was like the emperor's new clothes or something. Everyone always said the sky was blue so it was just something you always accepted as fact. And who was he to argue with the masses?

He wondered why he didn't remember this from before he went to hell. Had it been blue before and he just hadn't been paying close enough attention?

But no matter. Fact of the matter was, here Dean was. Breathing fresh air. After decades of being tortured in hell Dean had escaped.

He was topside and Sam was topside. Maybe they could pick up where they had left off.

**/ / /**

Dean was furious with Sam. What the hell was he thinking. One minute Dean was talking to him and then Dean blinks, he freakin' _blinks_, and Sam's gone. Dean knows _he's_ not crazy and he wonders where Sam picked up this fancy new trick.

He blinks again and he's falling into Sam because even though Sam wasn't there just a second ago, he is now. He wants to confront Sam about it but he won't because that's something Sam needs to bring up himself.

So he waits but Sam is just staring at him. Sam must think that Dean is some kind of a moron not to have noticed.

"Something you should tell me Sam?" He asks pointedly.

"What?" Sam tilts his head and Dean wants to smack him for pretending he doesn't know what he is talking about. Dean will let it slide this time but Sam is going to have to tell him eventually.

**/ / /**

Dean rubs his chest to alleviate the tightness. _Just breathe. _He's feeling light headed and dizzy and he forces himself to take another deep breath to get oxygen to his brain.

His amulet is missing and Sam will kill him if he finds out that he lost it.

Sam walks into the room and Dean is crawling on all fours checking under the bed and Sam wants to know what Dean is looking for.

"My contact lens."

"You don't wear contacts."

"Yeah, well I decided I should."

Sam joins him on the floor, "If you tell me what you're looking for I can help you find it."

Dean sighs and tells him reluctantly, "I lost my amulet."

Sam looks down at his brother's chest, "No you didn't." He says giving a slight tug on the object that is hanging by a string around Dean's neck.

And there it is and Dean is positive it wasn't there just a minute ago. He's positive.

Sam just laughs and claps his brother on the back, "Dude, maybe you really do need to start wearing contacts!"

**/ / /  
><strong>

Sam isn't hiding his magic tricks as well this time. He's grown careless and maybe he takes Dean for a fool. Maybe he doesn't think Dean will notice if in the middle of a conversation he just up and disappears. But Dean notices. He sure as hell notices.

He's not crazy!

But maybe Sam is. Who knows what went on with Sam while Dean wasn't there to watch him. Maybe he flipped his lid.

Or maybe he started tapping into those psychic powers of his.

Teleportation. Invisibility. Demons. What exactly was it that Sam was doing?

"Come ON, Sam!" Dean growls in disbelief.

Thirty seconds.

Sam is still gone.

If it was invisibility, wouldn't Dean still at least be able to see Sam's clothes? That's how it worked, right? But Dean didn't know. How the hell should he know?

He's having another panic attack and this is worse than the last because losing your gigantic, corporeal brother is a hell of a lot more terrifying than losing a necklace. And how does one lose a brother that was standing right in front of you just forty-five seconds before?

"Sam! Where did you go? Get back here or I swear to God I will kill you!"

And Dean's not breathing and somewhere in his head something is screaming at him to just _breathe. _But he can't, and he doesn't until he feels hands on his arms, shaking him and then Sam is right there, his eyes wide and it looks like he's having trouble breathing too.

"Dean! Look at me! I'm right here!" His breath is short and ragged.

****/ / /****

It lasts for one minute. One terrifying minute.

Dean had been acting a little... off... ever since he returned from Hell. But that was expected.

Expected? What a ridiculous thing to say. Sam had never _expected_ to see Dean standing at his doorstep. Much less did he ever expect to be trying to deal with Dean's PTSD.

What he meant to say was that no one comes back from Hell in one piece. Okay and that's a ridiculous thing to say too. Because no one comes back from Hell. Period. In one piece or otherwise.

And he doesn't exactly know how to deal. It's not like there's a support group for the families of hell survivors.

So he looks into support groups for the families of people dealing with PTSD. Mostly families of veterans who had fought in a war. But nobody really gets what he's going through. What Sam is going through or what Dean is going through. Not even Sam knows what Dean is going through.

Sam doesn't want to minimize their pain but sometimes he wishes he was just dealing with a brother who had had to watch his fellow soldier and best friend get his head blown off. Because that was something Sam felt he could deal with. In fact it was something that they _had_ dealt with. More than once.

So yeah. He felt pretty alone in this. Especially since Dean wasn't doing much to help. Wasn't letting him be part of the healing process.

It was one whole freakin' minute where Dean was there but he wasn't really there.

When it happened, Sam had been telling him that he was missing his favorite pair of jeans and that maybe he had left them at the laundromat the other day when they were doing laundry. Then he had asked Dean if he would mind going through his duffel bag to see if the missing jeans had made their way in with Dean's stuff...

"Come ON, Sam!"

Okay, so that was not the reaction Sam had been expecting.

"Sorry man, if you don't want to... I can do it. I just didn't think you'd want me looking through your duffel bag... you're kinda obsessive compulsive about it."

But Dean didn't seem to hear him or see him.

Dean was staring right at him. No, he was staring right _through _him. Sam waved his hand in front of Dean's face but there was no reaction.

"Dean!"

He was muttering something about teleportation and invisibility and he wasn't making any sense.

And oh God, he wasn't breathing. He was having a full blown panic attack and he wasn't breathing.

"Sam! Where did you go? Get back here or I swear to God I will kill you!"

"Breathe Dean! Just breathe!"

Dean wasn't breathing and he wasn't responding to him. Why the hell wasn't he responding?

Sam grabbed him by the shoulders and was shaking him, "Dean! Look at me! I'm right here!"

And then Dean's eyes met his. He gasped for air as the color flooded back to his face.

****/ / /****

Neither brother knew what was going on. Why things just disappeared. Why at one moment Dean was able to see something and then at the next he just couldn't. Like a mental block or something.

Kind of like one of those illusions where two people looking at the same picture see two different things.

Only it wasn't like that at all.

Dean had thought the problem was Sam. Sam knew it wasn't.

"I'm so screwed to hell." Dean laughed but his eyes betrayed his fear.

Sam hadn't laughed.

"I'm going to call Bobby." Was all he said.

_"Bobby? Yeah, this is Sam... It's Dean... I don't know what's wrong with him... I really need your help..."_

Bobby hadn't been able to help. He had promised to try but he barely understood what the problem was.

Dean hated this. Hated this so much. Hated feeling so out of control.

He hated the way Sam looked at him. Like he was going crazy. But he wasn't, he really wasn't.

He hated that Sam used this against him at every opportunity. Hell, Sam wouldn't let him drive the Impala anymore and the worst part was that Dean couldn't even blame him. He hated that he couldn't hate Sam for this. The last time he drove the car they had nearly crashed because Dean hadn't seen the deer that was meandering out into the middle of the road.

He hadn't seen it.

How could he not see a huge freakin' deer? Sam had grabbed the wheel and swerved just in time.

After that Dean handed over the keys to his car.

But that wasn't nearly as awkward as the time when he face planted right into the Impala. He had gone to grab some coffee and the Impala was gone. Sam had seen him from the motel window. Hands on his knees, hyperventilating because someone had stolen his car.

The old man who had tried to help Dean, kept repeating, "What's wrong? What's wrong? Should I call 911?"

Dean nearly snapped the man's head off for his trouble.

He pulled himself together and ran towards the parking spot where he had left it the night before. Hoping for some hint, some clue as to who had stolen her.

And then he had run right smack into her side and holy shit, it had hurt!

There she sat, infuriatingly, right where he had left her and he hated that now he could see her, clear as day.

****/ / /****

It was me, it was the Impala, it was his amulet. Things he cared for and perhaps the things that he feared losing the most. And it was an explanation but even that didn't fit completely. There was the deer in the middle of the road that he hadn't seen and I didn't really think that Dean had a special connection with a deer. Although maybe just the fact that the deer was a part of nature, a part of the earth that for so long he hadn't been part of. Maybe it was tied to his fear of being dragged back to hell.

Perhaps I was shoehorning but it was the only explanation I had.

But figuring it out didn't really fix anything anyway.

What did help was realizing that Dean could see things if he could touch them.

When he smacked his face against the Impala. When I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. When I had pulled at the amulet around his neck.

Touching things brought them back and while it helped to know this, it didn't really fix anything. Didn't stop things from disappearing and didn't fix whatever was messed up in his brain. I fervently prayed that all he needed was time.

I didn't leave his side and I knew this bothered him. I knew he hated being so dependent on me. It went against his nature to not only accept help but to accept help from the person that he was supposed to be protecting.

I knew how wrong it felt for him but I didn't really care. It was hard not being able to fix my brother, to only know the effect and not the cause and sometimes it felt like he was falling apart in front of my eyes but part of me loved it. Loved that he wouldn't let me go farther than arm's reach. That he needed me there to keep him chained to reality.

We both knew that if I left he would lose it. That it was me that kept the insanity that tickled the edges of his mind at bay.

I couldn't fix him but I could keep him tethered to reality.

**The End**


End file.
